These professional quality gravies and stocks are perfect for warming up winter menus. 

As most professionals working within the catering industry will be glad to tell you, good gravy and stock is a cornerstone of the kitchen. From a thick, glossy gravy poured over a beautifully roasted joint to a clear reduced jus packed with condensed flavour, they’re the culinary staples that makes the simplest dishes sing. 

To be clear (and there’s no pun intended here), stock is the juice made by gently boiling down the left over carcass of meat, fish or shellfish, most often with the addition of some appropriate aromatics. A good stock should contain enough collagen from the slowly simmered bones have imbued it with some natural thickness and delicate gloss. A broth (commonly known as bullion in French cuisine) is similar to a stock but is cooked faster, and often uses vegetables rather than meat, or a combination of both. 

Alternatively, gravy is made by adding flour (or another thickening agent) to fat (usually produced a meat cooks), before a liquid such as water, wine or stock is added. Because all gravy contains an agent like flour or cornstarch, it is usually thicker than stock. 

Stock is also referred to in French as le fond, which literally translates as ‘the foundation’, and gives a good indication of just what vital culinary building blocks stocks and gravies are. So it’s obviously about a lot more than boiling bones. In fact the revered Michelin Guide has a recipe for veal stock by the internationally celebrated chef Emmanuel Stroobant, which contains fifteen different ingredients, and involves up to 10hours of slow cooking, with regular attendance for skimming impurities and additions of water. 

What it all boils down to… 

For many busy commercial kitchens these days, this level of time-consuming, labour intensive activity is simply not practical – yet the alternative of using pre-made powders or granules is equally unappetising, and this was precisely the dilemma up-and-coming chef Nigel Crane found himself facing nearly two decades ago. 

Refusing to compromise on quality, Nigel decided to develop his own, and in doing so proved that necessity is always the path to successful innovation. 

Even though he began by creating just four stock powders, Nigel soon found himself inundated with requests from other catering professionals facing exactly the same dilemma in their kitchens – and Essential Cuisine was born. 

Today, driven forward by increasing and ever broadening demand, Essential Cuisine produces the highest quality, stocks, gravies and jus, available as fresh, ready-to-use liquids or bouillon (powder). 

Perfected over the past fifteen years, Essential Cuisine’s products have become one of our most frequently sought after professional ranges, refined to deliver concentrated bursts of homemade flavour while also performing to the rigorous requirements of the busy modern kitchen. 

Essential Cuisine’s rich, clear liquid stocks taste authentic and traditional, while their versatile bouillon powder can be dissolved to make stock instantly, used to enhance your own stockpot, or even applied as dry rubs and seasoning. 

All clear 

Renowned for the quality of their varied ingredients, these stock and sauces have become equally popular thanks to the comprehensive list of things they don’t include. Unlike many cheaper instant stock products, the Essential Cuisine ranges never use hydrogenated oils, GM ingredients, preservatives or MSG, the latter often added along with elevated levels of salt, as the most inexpensive method of artificially enhancing flavour in many cheaper products. 

In Essential Cuisines stock and sauce ranges you’ll find the same levels of salt and fat as you would if you’d made them yourself. These superior products also deliver superior yield, creating delicious stock at just 12g-20g per litre. 

Meanwhile, similar budget products may appear cheap, but actually become a false economy, when twice as much is then required to produce the necessary intensity of flavour. 

By dedicating themselves to authentic quality, Essential Cuisine ranges also provide economy, and in the competitive low-margin world of catering, that’s every kind of gravy you need…